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Title: The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin, Jessie Gillespie ISBN: 0-395-89110-8 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 27 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A TRUE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
Comment: This sentimental gem by the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm glows with familial warmth and the true spirit of Christmas. A frail ten-year-old girl named Carol (because she was born on Christmas Day and her mother heard the carols from the church next door) plans a memorable Christmas for a poor family of 9 children who live in the back alley. Carol wants nothing for herself this year, since she feels already blessed by the riches of love from her own family.
Quaintly narrated with occasional old-fashioned words to remind us of its century-old setting, this book may not appeal to hardcore 90's school kids, who prefer action and popular slang. But the messages of family unity, bravery in the face of hopelessness, and cheerful self-sacrifice provide inspiration, especially during the holiday season. Perfect to be read aloud a chapter at a time--promoting intergenerational literary pleasure and special family memories.
Rating: 4
Summary: Put this one on your Christmas reading list
Comment: This is one of the books my third-grade teacher read aloud to us after recess to ease us back into our afternoon studies. It took at least a week, perhaps two for her to work her way through the story, which many of us had not heard before (unless we had an older brother or sister who had heard her read it during a previous year and came home to retell it). Some of her book choices appealed more to girls, some more to boys, but this one, I remember distinctly -- more than forty years later -- kept all of us attentive.
The story, set in the 1880's, is simple: after several sons, a family finally has a little girl, who is named Carol because she is born on Christmas morning when the sounds of the choir singing a carol came floating in the window of the house. Sadly, she has an illness (unnamed) that the she and family must accept is incurable and will be fatal. Although she has just about every toy imaginable, and the continuous attention of her parents and older brothers, she longs to do something for someone else and decides, after a bit of thinking, to throw a birthday party (i.e., Christmas party) and invite the poor Ruggles children who live in the lane.
It can not be denied that the story is dripping with Victorian sentimentality and that Carol is almost too good to be true, nor can it be denied that it is effectively told and will touch all but the hardest hearts. The image of the Ruggles children wrapped in blankets while their mother washed their clothes in anticipation of the party is but one of the vivid vignettes in this delightful book.
Along with the Nativity story and "A Christmas Carol", put this on top of the list for holiday reading. As my third-grade teacher (long-departed) proved, this is a wonderful read-aloud story.
Rating: 4
Summary: tearjerker
Comment: To the world at large, Kate Douglas Wiggin is best remembered as the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903). But in the Judd household, we recall her as the author of the bathetic yuletide classic The Birds' Christmas Carol.
The brief novella tells the story of Carol Bird, a sickly little rich girl born on Christmas Eve. An impossibly good and generous child, she is inevitably doomed:
"Dear heart," said Mr. Bird, pacing up and down the library floor, "it is no use to shut our eyes to it any longer; Carol will never be well again. It almost seems as if I could not bear it when I think of that loveliest child doomed to lie there day after day, and, what is still more, to suffer pain that we are helpless to keep away from her. Merry Christmas, indeed; it gets to be the saddest day in the year to me!" and poor Mr. Bird sank into a chair by the table, and buried his face in his hands, to keep his wife from seeing the tears that would come in spite of all his efforts. "But, Donald, dear," said sweet Mrs. Bird, with trembling voice, "Christmas day may not be so merry with us as it used, but it is very happy, and that is better, and very blessed, and that is better yet. I suffer chiefly for Carol's sake, but I have almost given up being sorrowful for my own. I am too happy in the child, and I see too clearly what she has done for us and for our boys."
"That's true, bless her sweet heart," said Mr. Bird; "she has been better than a daily sermon in the house ever since she was born, and especially since she was taken ill."
"Yes, Donald and Paul and Hugh were three strong, willful, boisterous boys, but you seldom see such tenderness, devotion, thought for others and self-denial in lads of their years. A quarrel or a hot word is almost unknown in this house. Why? Carol would hear it, and it would distress her, she is so full of love and goodness. The boys study with all their might and main.
Why? Partly, at least, because they like to teach Carol, and amuse her by telling her what they read. When the seamstress comes, she likes to sew in Miss Carol's room, because there she forgets her own troubles, which, Heaven knows, are sore enough! And as for me, Donald, I am a better woman every day for Carol's sake; I have to be her eyes, ears, feet, hands--her strength, her hope; and she, my own little child, is my example!"
"I was wrong, dear heart," said Mr. Bird more cheerfully; "we will try not to repine, but to rejoice instead, that we have an 'angel of the house' like Carol."
"And as for her future," Mrs. Bird went on, "I think we need not be over-anxious. I feel as if she did not belong altogether to us, and when she has done what God sent her for, He will take her back to Himself--and it may not be very long!" Here it was poor Mrs. Bird's turn to break down, and Mr. Bird's turn to comfort her.
Having reformed her family, Carol determines to help out the poor but numerous Ruggles children who live in the carriage house outside her window. To this end she plans a Christmas Party for them and sacrifices her own gifts in order to buy them presents. But after this happiest day of her life, she passes away in her sleep as the strains of a neighboring church choir waft through her window. The Ruggles children are mortified that they may have caused her death:
Sadness reigned, it is true, in the little house behind the garden; and one day poor Sarah Maud, with a courage born of despair, threw on her hood and shawl, walked straight to a certain house a mile away, dashed up the marble steps and into good Dr. Bartol's office, falling at his feet as she cried, "Oh, sir, it was me an' our childern that went to Miss Carol's last dinner party, an' if we made her worse we can't never be happy again!" Then the kind old gentleman took her rough hand in his and told her to dry her tears, for neither she nor any of her flock had hastened Carol's flight--indeed, he said that had it not been for the strong hopes and wishes that filled her tired heart, she could not have stayed long enough to keep that last merry Christmas with her dear ones.
And so the old years, fraught with memories, die, one after another, and the new years, bright with hopes, are born to take their places; but Carol lives again in every chime of Christmas bells that peal glad tidings and in every Christmas anthem sung by childish voices.
I fondly recall my Mother sobbing through this chapter as Jeff Farris, one of the neighborhood kids who basically lived at our house, asked plaintively, "Are you going to stop crying long enough to finish this? I'll never find out what happened." (NB: Here's a special visual aid--to imagine this scene in your head, simply picture a small gang of urchins in a rice paddie surrounding a woman on the verge of a breakdown )
I don't know that I'd go as far as my Mom (see her review) and say that every holiday requires a sobfest, but it doesn't hurt for those of us with health and plenty to be reminded that we are pretty lucky. And even a certified curmudgeon like me still gets his heart strings tugged by this little tearjerker.
GRADE: B+
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